Subject: [lojban] Re: What the heck is this crap?

From: Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 19:23:21 -0600

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 02:27:32PM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
[...]
> To wit: it is the opinion of the old-time experts that
> 
> ca ro djedi lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> lo nanmu ca ro djedi cu cinba la meris
> 
> are distinct in meaning.
> 
> More frighteningly, this implies that:
> 
> ca le nu broda kei lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> lo nanmu ca le nu broda kei cu cinba la meris
[...]
> And pretty much everyone on jboske seems to agree with it. I don't
> normally read jboske, myself; xod pointed this out to me.

Believe it or not, I agree with the jboskeists on this.

In chapter 16, it says clearly that quantifiers scope to the right
just like one would expect. This is said where:
ro da de zo'u da viska de
Everything sees something.

da ro de zo'u da viska de
There-is-an-X such-that-for-every-Y : X sees Y.

It also says that "ro prenu" == "ro da poi prenu" around example 6.5

It also says in chapter 6 that "PA broda" == "PA lo ro broda" around
section 8 "indefinite descriptions".

Since == is a transitive operator we can then say that
ro da poi prenu == ro lo prenu
and that
lo prenu == su'o da poi prenu
(without binding da of course).

So the examples robin gives are in fact different -- moving them
changes the meaning because the quantifiers move.

pe'i this is all book lojban, though perhaps slightly hard to grok
from the pages.

-- 
Jordan DeLong - [email-masked]
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku